Chekhov The Witch and Other Stories

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4553-9257-5
Verlag: Seltzer Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 727 Seiten

This collection includes: THE WITCH, PEASANT WIVES, THE POST, THE NEW VILLA, DREAMS, THE PIPE, AGAFYA, AT CHRISTMAS TIME, GUSEV, THE STUDENT, IN THE RAVINE, THE HUNTSMAN, HAPPINESS, A MALEFACTOR, and PEASANTS. According to Wikipedia: 'Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860 - 1904) was a Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in world literature. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics Chekhov practised as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: 'Medicine is my lawful wife,' he once said, 'and literature is my mistress.' Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896; but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Uncle Vanya and premiered Chekhov's last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a special challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a 'theatre of mood' and a 'submerged life in the text.' Chekhov had at first written stories only for the money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chekhov, Anton

Weitere Mitwirkende

Garnett, Constance

Leseproben

THE WITCH AND OTHER STORIES ANTON CHEKHOV
  published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT, USA established in 1974, offering over 14,000 books   Chekhov story collections: The Bishop and Other Stories The Chorus Girl and Other StoriesThe Cook's Wedding and Other Stories The Darling and Other Stories The Duel and Other Stories The Horse Stealers and Other Stories The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories Love and Other Stories The Party and Other Stories The Schoolmaster and Other Stories The Schoolmistress and Other Stories The Wife and Other Stories The Witch and Other Stories The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories   feedback welcome: [e-mail]   visit us at samizdat.com   Translated by Constance Garnett   THE WITCH PEASANT WIVES THE POST THE NEW VILLA DREAMS THE PIPE AGAFYA AT CHRISTMAS TIME GUSEV THE STUDENT IN THE RAVINE THE HUNTSMAN HAPPINESS A MALEFACTOR PEASANTS    THE WITCH
  IT was approaching nightfall. The sexton, Savely Gykin, was lying in his huge bed in the hut adjoining the church. He was not asleep, though it was his habit to go to sleep at the same time as the hens. His coarse red hair peeped from under one end of the greasy patchwork quilt, made up of coloured rags, while his big unwashed feet stuck out from the other. He was listening. His hut adjoined the wall that encircled the church and the solitary window in it looked out upon the open country. And out there a regular battle was going on. It was hard to say who was being wiped off the face of the earth, and for the sake of whose destruction nature was being churned up into such a ferment; but, judging from the unceasing malignant roar, someone was getting it very hot. A victorious force was in full chase over the fields, storming in the forest and on the church roof, battering spitefully with its fists upon the windows, raging and tearing, while something vanquished was howling and wailing. . . . A plaintive lament sobbed at the window, on the roof, or in the stove. It sounded not like a call for help, but like a cry of misery, a consciousness that it was too late, that there was no salvation. The snowdrifts were covered with a thin coating of ice; tears quivered on them and on the trees; a dark slush of mud and melting snow flowed along the roads and paths. In short, it was thawing, but through the dark night the heavens failed to see it, and flung flakes of fresh snow upon the melting earth at a terrific rate. And the wind staggered like a drunkard. It would not let the snow settle on the ground, and whirled it round in the darkness at random.   Savely listened to all this din and frowned. The fact was that he knew, or at any rate suspected, what all this racket outside the window was tending to and whose handiwork it was.   "I know!" he muttered, shaking his finger menacingly under the bedclothes; "I know all about it."   On a stool by the window sat the sexton's wife, Raissa Nilovna. A tin lamp standing on another stool, as though timid and distrustful of its powers, shed a dim and flickering light on her broad shoulders, on the handsome, tempting-looking contours of her person, and on her thick plait, which reached to the floor. She was making sacks out of coarse hempen stuff. Her hands moved nimbly, while her whole body, her eyes, her eyebrows, her full lips, her white neck were as still as though they were asleep, absorbed in the monotonous, mechanical toil. Only from time to time she raised her head to rest her weary neck, glanced for a moment towards the window, beyond which the snowstorm was raging, and bent again over her sacking. No desire, no joy, no grief, nothing was expressed by her handsome face with its turned-up nose and its dimples. So a beautiful fountain expresses nothing when it is not playing.   But at last she had finished a sack. She flung it aside, and, stretching luxuriously, rested her motionless, lack-lustre eyes on the window. The panes were swimming with drops like tears, and white with short-lived snowflakes which fell on the window, glanced at Raissa, and melted. . . .   "Come to bed!" growled the sexton. Raissa remained mute. But suddenly her eyelashes flickered and there was a gleam of attention in her eye. Savely, all the time watching her expression from under the quilt, put out his head and asked:   "What is it?"   "Nothing. . . . I fancy someone's coming," she answered quietly.   The sexton flung the quilt off with his arms and legs, knelt up in bed, and looked blankly at his wife. The timid light of the lamp illuminated his hirsute, pock-marked countenance and glided over his rough matted hair.   "Do you hear?" asked his wife.   Through the monotonous roar of the storm he caught a scarcely audible thin and jingling monotone like the shrill note of a gnat when it wants to settle on one's cheek and is angry at being prevented.   "It's the post," muttered Savely, squatting on his heels.   Two miles from the church ran the posting road. In windy weather, when the wind was blowing from the road to the church, the inmates of the hut caught the sound of bells.   "Lord! fancy people wanting to drive about in such weather," sighed Raissa.   "It's government work. You've to go whether you like or not."   The murmur hung in the air and died away.   "It has driven by," said Savely, getting into bed.   But before he had time to cover himself up with the bedclothes he heard a distinct sound of the bell. The sexton looked anxiously at his wife, leapt out of bed and walked, waddling, to and fro by the stove. The bell went on ringing for a little, then died away again as though it had ceased.   "I don't hear it," said the sexton, stopping and looking at his wife with his eyes screwed up.   But at that moment the wind rapped on the window and with it floated a shrill jingling note. Savely turned pale, cleared his throat, and flopped about the floor with his bare feet again.   "The postman is lost in the storm," he wheezed out glancing malignantly at his wife. "Do you hear? The postman has lost his way! . . I . . . I know! Do you suppose I . . don't understand? " he muttered. "I know all about it, curse you!"   "What do you know?" Raissa asked quietly, keeping her eyes fixed on the window.   "I know that it's all your doing, you she-devil! Your doing, damn you! This snowstorm and the post going wrong, you've done it all -- you!"   "You're mad, you silly," his wife answered calmly.   "I've been watching you for a long time past and I've seen it. From the first day I married you I noticed that you'd bitch's blood in you!"   "Tfoo!" said Raissa, surprised, shrugging her shoulders and crossing herself. "Cross yourself, you fool!"   "A witch is a witch," Savely pronounced in a hollow, tearful voice, hurriedly blowing his nose on the hem of his shirt; "though you are my wife, though you are of a clerical family, I'd say what you are even at confession. . . . Why, God have mercy upon us! Last year on the Eve of the Prophet Daniel and the Three Young Men there was a snowstorm, and what happened then? The mechanic came in to warm himself. Then on St. Alexey's Day the ice broke on the river and the district policeman turned up, and he was chatting with you all night . . . the damned brute! And when he came out in the morning and I looked at him, he had rings under his eyes and his cheeks were hollow! Eh? During the August fast there were two storms and each time the huntsman turned up. I saw it all, damn him! Oh, she is redder than a crab now, aha!"   "You didn't see anything."   "Didn't I! And this winter before Christmas on the Day of the Ten Martyrs of Crete, when the storm lasted for a whole day and night -- do you remember? -- the marshal's clerk was lost, and turned up here, the hound. . . . Tfoo! To be tempted by the clerk! It was worth upsetting God's weather for him! A drivelling scribbler, not a foot from the ground, pimples all over his mug and his neck awry! If he were good-looking, anyway -- but he, tfoo! he is as ugly as Satan!"   The sexton took breath, wiped his lips and listened. The bell was not to be heard, but the wind banged on the roof, and again there came a tinkle in the...